


Issuer—Encoder—Message—(Decoder?)—Receptor

by LesMisgayrables



Series: I've Created a Monster [1]
Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: First Dates, First Kiss, M/M, Pining Enjolras, Snogging, ridiculously american courfeyrac
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-20
Updated: 2014-04-20
Packaged: 2018-01-20 02:22:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1493155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LesMisgayrables/pseuds/LesMisgayrables
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Enjolras finally has the courage to ask Grantaire to please ask him out—Grantaire misunderstands. Enjolras wants Grantaire to really kiss him—he doesn't know how to ask. They just have communicational issues. All-star power couple Combeferre and Courfeyrac are there to help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Issuer—Encoder—Message—(Decoder?)—Receptor

**Author's Note:**

> This is the introductory chapter to a 20+K word-long series of plotless porn, and the only one with a T rating, ha!  
> Enjolras is wildly OOC in here, I know, but bear with me.  
> It'll basically be the descent of Enjolras into a, well, sexual being. Hence the title for the series.

“Grantaire, I have something to ask of you,” Enjolras said at the end of a meeting. Grantaire looked up from where he was drawing an impressively accurate sketch of Combeferre and Courfeyrac snogging in the corner. He blinked at the blond.

He’d been getting along, or so he thought, with Enjolras, for less than a month. Maybe. Some days Enjolras would snap viciously at him for no discernible reason, other days Enjolras would actively and indiscreetly avoid him, and the remaining days Enjolras would seek him out like an excited puppy, so he was, personally, confused as fuck. He tried to be nice whenever the chance presented itself, though. Today, for instance, seemed to be one of those days when Enjolras treated him as a, holy crap, a _friend_. He rolled his eyes at his own thoughts. Enjolras must’ve been observing him closely, because he pointed out the oddly-timed eye roll.

“Something funny?”

“What’s that?” blinked Grantaire.

“You rolled your eyes and snorted. Did you remember a joke?” he said slowly. Grantaire smiled at him and invited him to sit down. Enjolras did, surprisingly.

“Not really. What is it you wanted?” he prompted easily.

Enjolras took a deep breath and seemed to get stuck on his own words, which most definitely never happened. It must have been bad news; maybe he was finally kicking him out of the group, banishing him from the grounds of the great Musain. Grantaire started to panic, but before he could run away, Enjolras growled in frustration at his lack of words.

“I’m sorry, this never happens; I’m not usually at loss for words,” he apologised irritated.

“I’m aware,” he said numbly. Enjolras blushed.

“I need you to ask me out,” he blurted out in a strangely dignified manner. Grantaire blinked and sipped his drink.

“Sorry, come again?”

“I need you to ask me out,” he repeated. When Grantaire said nothing, he resorted to reading his expression closely, which proved unhelpful, because Grantaire’s face was awfully blank. His next option was to explain the context of his petition. Maybe he should’ve started with that in the first place. “My original purpose upon requesting a favour of you was to invite you out on a date myself, but since apparently I can’t talk coherently in front of you anymore, that plan went pretty much down the toilet, so I need you to ask me out. Please.”

Grantaire raised his coffee again, feeling number than before. “You want to ask me out?” he asked for confirmation before sipping his drink.

“Yes. Clearly that’s not gonna happen today.”

“You could always try tomorrow,” he said dumbly. Enjolras apparently saw value in his suggestion, but quickly shook his head in disagreement.

“That’s one day more gone by without asking you out.”

“Of course,” he said. Enjolras waited expectantly, getting a little redder by the second. Grantaire didn’t really know what he was waiting for, so he looked down at his sketch blankly for a second. “Um, do you wanna see my drawing?”

“Sure,” replied Enjolras. “When?”

Grantaire frowned. “Um… right now?”

Enjolras tilted his head to the side in confusion. “That’s an odd choice, but sure. It’s a date, then. Thank you.” He stood up and dropped down a chair closer to a bemused Grantaire. “Hi,” he said, with a little smile. Grantaire waved awkwardly. “So, what does one do on dates?”

“Dates?” asked Grantaire, “As in, romantic dates for getting to know another person?”

Enjolras hummed thoughtfully. Grantaire was still waiting for an answer when Enjolras piped up another question. “How was your childhood?”

Grantaire blinked. “Whoa, where did that come from?”

Enjolras raised an eyebrow. “I’m trying to get to know more about you.”

Grantaire frowned and suddenly it dawned on him. “Oh, shit.”

“What?”

“You asked me out on a _date?_ ”

“Technically, you did,” said Enjolras bemusedly. “You just did, actually.”

“No, I asked you if you wanted to see my drawing,” he said slowly. Enjolras opened his mouth and then closed it.

“So you didn’t ask me out on a date.”

“No. No, I did not.”

“Oh. Right,” Enjolras said blankly before standing up and moving to walk away, but Grantaire sure as hell wasn’t gonna let his chance walk away like that, so he shot forward and grabbed Enjolras’s right wrist, making the blond snap his eyes up to his. “But if you want to, we could go for a cuppa tomorrow,” he said with an open tilt at the end of the sentence. When Enjolras didn’t immediately reply, he gave him the most charming smile he could produce.

Enjolras blinked quickly. “Are you asking me out?”

“Well, didn’t you ask me to ask you out on a date?”

“Is that a yes or a no?”

“Yes or no what?”

“Was that an invitation to a date?”

“Yes.”

“Oh. Yes, then. Great.”

Grantaire positively beamed at him and Enjolras blushed. “When are you free?”

“My last class is over at six tomorrow,” replied Enjolras with a sheepish smile. Grantaire ripped the sketch of the snogging power couple from his sketchbook.

“I’ll be there at six, then,” he said as he stood up. “See you then!” he grinned, bowed a little— _bowed!_ —and walked to Combeferre and Courfeyrac. They looked up at him when he got close and accepted Grantaire’s offered sketch gratefully, Courfeyrac particularly excited.

“This is awesomely hot! Thank you, R!” he said. Grantaire patted his cheek and walked away. Enjolras had only stared at him with a half smile in his face as he did all this, and followed him with his eyes as he walked away from the Musain, a little skip in his step. Courfeyrac recognised that particular brand of stupid smile. “Enjolras is in luuurve,” he teased in his ridiculous American accent. Combeferre rolled his eyes at him but looked up at Enjolras curiously. Enjolras was still looking at the last place he’d seen Grantaire.

“What happened, Enjolras?” asked Combeferre. Enjolras turned to him and the small smile spread like a cracked egg.

“Grantaire asked me out.”

Needless to say, Combeferre and Courfeyrac were deeply offended that Enjolras hadn’t told them about his interest in Grantaire –they stopped talking to him for the rest of the day, but come next afternoon, they agreed to help him pick some appropriate clothes under one condition:

“Tell us if Grantaire is a good kisser,” grinned Courfeyrac, and before he could say no to that, he was pushed out the door and locked out. No wonder they’d made him agree to the condition before they said it. He sighed and made his way to the campus for his hour-long class, but he was mostly thinking about what was coming after.

 

He walked out of the hall having mostly forgotten about his date. Mostly. He felt someone bump unto him good-naturedly and smiled, knowing whom it was. He stopped walking, but didn’t turn.

“Hey,” greeted Grantaire. Enjolras looked at him furtively out of the corner of his eyes.

“Hello,” he replied. Grantaire looked at him, so he supposed he could look at Grantaire, too. He did. He felt his cheeks redden for no reason at all, so in embarrassment he started walking again, Grantaire didn’t miss a beat, walking beside him casually.

“Have you ever been on a date before?” asked Grantaire, not a trace of mocking or actual curiosity in his tone, just a sense of professionalism, if that made sense. Enjolras immediately trusted him.

“Ah, well, no. That’s something I should probably let you know,” he said.

“Alright; cool. So no dating,” Grantaire nodded.

“And no… physical dating stuff,” he said awkwardly, “whatsoever.” Grantaire didn’t say anything for a while this time.

“We don’t have to, you know that, right?” he asked with a small frown. “I’m not going to, say, kiss you without consent, or even take your hand. You lead; whatever you’re comfortable with.”

Enjolras blushed “Yeah, good. Where to, then?”

Grantaire smiled. “There’s this nice little coffee house one block down Kingsley Avenue—”

“That’s a Starbucks,” he said dryly, but smiled at the joke. Grantaire laughed.

“Damn, I wanted to take you there and see how you’d react.”

Enjolras laughed and instinctively reached for Grantaire’s hand. They both looked down between themselves in shock, but after a moment Grantaire squished his hand and pulled him along.

They eventually ended up in a little Italian place, talking amiably over their plates, clinking their glasses of wine together and eating with one hand, since they weren’t too willing to let go of each other.

They said goodbye after dinner, making plans for the weekend and promising to text over the following day. Grantaire kissed his cheek softly, making him blush profusely and swoon in his spot. Grantaire simply chuckled and walked away. Enjolras grinned and walked home in a daze. He realised then that three glasses of wine might’ve been a little more than enough; he was feeling a bit tipsy.

 

 

They’d been dating for three weeks now. Enjolras understood why Grantaire always waited for him to initiate something, and that ‘something’ never became more than soft press of lips. He wanted more, but he didn’t know how to ask. He was pretty much stuck.

The blond thought about what he was about to do and cried internally, but that didn’t stop him from knocking three times.

“Are you decent?” he asked.

“Always,” Courfeyrac answered.

“Are you decent right now?”

“Yeah, come in.”

Enjolras opened the door to Combeferre’s room, which most of the time was Courfeyrac’s room, as well. He found them reading, each on their own side, in the same position reclined on the headboard, both wearing glasses. They turned the page at the same time. Enjolras shuddered, but walked in and dropped himself between the two of them, looking up at the ceiling.

“I have a problem,” he said. The couple bookmarked their progress, closed the books and placed them on their bedside table in almost perfect synchronisation. Enjolras resolved to send them a greeting card with something like “Perfect Couple Award”, but he doubted Hallmark made any of those, so, no can do.

“What’s up?” asked Combeferre.

“It’s about Grantaire.”

 The couple looked at each other. “Having problems already? You’ve only been dating for, like, a month.”

“Three weeks, actually,” he pointed out and blushed as he got ready to say the next part, “and we’re not having problems; it’s just that… um… he doesn’t kiss me?”

The couple smiled. Courfeyrac patted Enjolras’s hair. “You’ve been in England longer than I; you should know how they are –plus, Grantaire really doesn’t want to scare you away.”

“I know that, but it’s frustrating. We’ve been dating for three weeks and we’ve only kissed three times, and only at the end of the date, and always really short,” he bemoaned. “You know, there are people who have sex on the first date.”

Combeferre glanced at Courfeyrac for a fraction of a second, but still spoke normally. “So the problem is that you want him to kiss you more and he doesn’t know it. The solution is just kissing him yourself. That’s it.”

“That’s not it, though, because I want to be… I don’t know, surprised by him, not the other way around.”

“So surprise him. You know, he’ll only do to you what you do to him. It’s pretty nice of him, I think. If you want to be surprised, surprise him. If you want him to kiss you more, kiss him more—”

“If you want to have a hot date completely dedicated to snogging, initiate the hot snogging,” winked Courfeyrac knowingly. Enjolras blushed profusely, but didn’t deny it.

“I don’t know how,” he said. “How can I initiate something that I don’t know how to do?”

“Ah, so you do want it,” Combeferre said cheerfully. “By the way, Courf, you sound ridiculous saying ‘snogging’. Stick to your American equivalent,” he chuckled. Courfeyrac whined.

“‘Make out’ doesn’t sound _nearly_ as fun as ‘snogging’. I’ve been here for almost two years, I think I’m allowed to say the occasional British slang.”

Combeferre laughed and Enjolras smiled. When Combeferre leaned over him to peck Courfeyrac’s cheek, however, he started protesting. Courfeyrac put a hand over Enjolras’s eyes and kissed his partner properly.

“Bloody—guys, _guys_ ,” Enjolras protested, “I’m in the room. Save it, will you? We were discussing my inability to get kissed by my own… datepartner. This is unfair in so many ways.” His friends blessedly broke the kiss and Courfeyrac uncovered his eyes.

“Why don’t you try greeting R with a kiss on your next date?” suggested Combeferre.

“I s’pose that’s doable,” he shrugged.

 

He didn’t. He was apprehensible about making a spectacle of himself in public. They met at a little park that nobody except Grantaire knew of, within Les Amis. They held hands and glanced at each other indiscreetly, and shoved and pulled. Overall they were pretty adorable. Grantaire walked Enjolras home because “it was getting positively dark, and there was a game, so the hooligans were on the loose and might kill him”.

So he walked Enjolras to his shared flat; they were having a lengthy argument over the merits of organic food when they arrived, and Grantaire didn’t even mention leaving, which pleased Enjolras infinitely, but he kept his front and continued arguing as he unlocked the door and led them inside. Grantaire had just started arguing back when Enjolras dropped his keys on the counter, turned to him, pushed him back against the door and kissed him. He realised he’d caught Grantaire with his mouth open mid-argument, so he improvised and slipped his tongue between those lips, and brushed against his tongue. He moaned. Grantaire came alive.

The brunet drew his lips between his own and sucked, nipped and licked. Enjolras moaned again and pulled away for a second just to shake off his coat. Grantaire did the same. They dropped them carelessly on the nearest chair before meeting halfway again. The artist led the kiss, of course; Enjolras knew he was rather sloppy. Grantaire framed his face with his warm hands, tilted it a little to the side and leaned in again. Enjolras felt something deliciously foreign in his mouth and explored it with his own tongue, making sure to breathe through his nose.

His own hands slid up from Grantaire’s terse abdomen to his chest, rubbing up and down a few times, to his shoulders and up his neck, loving the feeling of Grantaire’s quick pulse on his right thumb. Grantaire moved his own hands to Enjolras’s back and pulled him closer. Their feet made the necessary arrangements to share the same small space.

Grantaire licked behind his upper teeth, unknowingly making him moan again. They explored each other’s mouths with gusto. Grantaire rolled their tongues together and bit Enjolras’s bottom lip before breaking the kiss and mouthing all the way up his jaw, finding a spot underneath it soft enough to bite, and sucking it into his mouth. Enjolras, who was highly dazed by sensation and was quickly becoming putty, groaned in both pain and pleasure and let his head fall to the side, granting easier access to Grantaire.

Grantaire left a trail of sweet kisses down his neck that made Enjolras hum, and sucked harshly at the base of his throat, above the collarbone. Enjolras croaked out a moan and let him suck until he was satisfied; then pulled Grantaire along to the loveseat. Enjolras tripped on it first, but Grantaire immediately dropped down and straddled him, kissing him again. While Grantaire’s hands went for his hair this time, Enjolras’s slowly travelled down the planes of Grantaire’s back and subtly lifted the hem of his loose tee, settling his hands on the small of his back under the shirt. Grantaire broke the kiss.

“Smooth,” he said huskily, causing certain parts of Enjolras’s brain to short-circuit. “I almost didn’t notice.”

“What gave it away?” he asked breathily. Grantaire opened his eyes and the sight that greeted him was enough for his pupils to dilate all the way.

“There’s a finger in my crack.” Enjolras’s eyes snapped open, but he didn’t move his hands.

“Oh.”

“Since you’re going all second base and all,” he started casually. Enjolras snorted quietly, “would you terribly mind if I did the same?”

“I don’t think you can touch my bum in this position,” he replied. Grantaire made a noise of agreement and toppled Enjolras onto his side, so his head was in the armrest. Enjolras went along with it and pulled his legs up the couch (Combeferre would kill him later); Grantaire moved, too. He straddled one leg, used one hand for support, and the other one slid up Enjolras’s shirt.

“Is this okay?” Grantaire asked.

“Okay, Grantaire, please listen to me very carefully,” said Enjolras. Grantaire started pulling his hand from its place, but Enjolras scrabbled to place it back where it was. “R, seriously, stop asking permission, and don’t only kiss me when the date is over. I really like it when you touch me. Deal?”

Grantaire blinked. “That’s not a deal at all.” Enjolras opened his mouth to retort, but he hurried to speak before: “But: deal. Absolutely. You’ll still draw the line, though.”

“Deal. Good. Okay, where were we?”

 

And that’s how Courfeyrac and Combeferre found them when they came in twenty minutes later. Their eyebrows were as high as they could without defying the law of gravity. They stepped silently so as to not alert the rutting, panting couple on the couch. Courfeyrac stilled him and pointed to Grantaire’s arse. Combeferre dutifully looked and noticed the hand clearly under the waistband, now moving up and under Grantaire’s shirt. Enjolras’s shirt was tucked up as far as it would go, Grantaire’s hands exploring the skin freely. Their legs were tangled together.

Courfeyrac hastily took his phone out of his pocket and opened the camera. Enjolras ground on Grantaire’s leg and groaned.

“ _Oh, my god! Oh, my god!_ ” Courfeyrac mouthed at Combeferre, who needlessly made the universal ‘shut up’ sign of the index over the mouth. Courfeyrac took a few photos until Combeferre dragged him away, silently, to their room. They pretended not to be listening in.

Five minutes later, they heard them saying their goodbyes and telling each other (multiple times) that they’d call. The door shut, and there was the double beep of a car unlocking a few seconds later. They heard Grantaire’s car driving away.

“Oh, that was _great!_ ” Enjolras said loudly to himself in celebration. Courfeyrac laughed loudly.

“We’re here,” announced Combeferre. They walked out of the room and Enjolras looked at them, totally rocking the reddest blush they’d ever seen. He opened his mouth to speak awkwardly.

“Did you see us—”

“Yes.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you liked it! Forgive the awkward blushing Enjolras; he's just very self-conscious about his inexperience.


End file.
